Population Bomb: Earth is Bleeding Human Capital

"I've got colleagues running around Florida trying to find people to take their knowledge before they die," says Peter Waggitt, a uranium production consultant to the IAEA. "Most of the senior experts in uranium mining are pushing 50 and some of the best are over 70." _SwissInfo

It is not too surprising when third world countries such as South Africa dismally fail to meet their electric power demands. Even though South Africa is the wealthiest and most advanced nation in SubSaharan Africa, it must still struggle with an average population IQ of only 72. More and more high IQ market dominant minorities in business, technology, and the professions are being driven from South Africa by sky-rocketing crime rates and other forms of rapid descent into third worldism.

It may come as a surprise to find that some of the same problems of human capital shortages are beginning to crop up in the advanced world.

The average university technician is aged over 40 and almost a third are over 50 years old, according to their trade union, Amicus Unite. It also warns that the training schemes that drew that generation of technicians into the sector have largely withered.

A report for the Higher Education Funding Council for England by consultancy Evidence Ltd found a 22 per cent drop in the number of technicians in engineering between the 1996 and 2001 research assessment exercises, almost a 23 per cent decline in biological sciences technicians and 16 and 17 per cent decreases in technicians for physical sciences and pre-clinical technicians.

"People are not coming into the sector as there is no development for them, and we are losing people because of the demographic time bomb," said Matt Levi, manager of the Leadership Foundation's Heated project, which was set up to research the problem. _TimesHE

Such problems are appearing in technology sectors all over the developed world. Europeans, S. Koreans, Japanese, Russians, and residents of the Anglosphere are failing to have children to replace themselves. Of the few children they have, not enough are going into technical professions that will be badly needed in the near future. One of the technology sectors which needs to grow the fastest, is the nuclear power sector. And that -- along with the power and energy industry in general -- is where some of the worst losses of human capital are occurring.

French utility EDF says around 50 percent of employees in its nuclear branch will retire by 2015 and that its workers are on average 43-44 years old.

In the United States, the peak age of workers in the nuclear sector is 48-52 while Britain estimates that up to two-thirds of its top-tier nuclear managers will retire by 2025. Worldwide, the nuclear industry employs around 250,000 people. Many first-generation nuclear staff have just retired or will do so in the next few years, taking with them skills and knowledge of complex, costly projects -- just as the nuclear renaissance gets underway.

Sometimes referred to as a "silver tsunami", the departure of the first generation of nuclear workers is a big concern for the IAEA, which promotes civilian nuclear technology alongside its role as atomic watchdog. Many countries and private firms have new units planned or under construction, the agency said in a September report for a conference of its 151 member states. "(They) are facing shortages of experienced personnel and loss of knowledge as they look to replace retiring staff for their existing fleet while at the same time staffing new projects."

Finnish nuclear regulator Stuk says the lack of skilled workers is at least partly to blame for the delays at Olkiluoto. So many experienced nuclear manufacturers have left the business that project managers have been forced to look for subcontractors who then need nuclear training, the regulator said in a presentation in August. Building the next generation of power plants will be demanding, "because much of the earlier experience and resources have been lost from the nuclear industry." _SwissInfo

As European populations fall from Europe to North America to Oceania, few members of many replacement populations possess the native talent to be trained in highly technical occupations which are crucial for an advancing future. Mexican immigrants to the US have an average IQ no higher than 90, shifting the occupational bell curve significantly to the left -- with many technical and scientific professions out of reach for most of the newcomers. Immigrants to Europe from North Africa and the Middle East have average IQs of around 85, a full standard deviation below native European populations. Fewer than 5% of these will be qualified for highly technical areas of study. The manpower shortages will only get worse.

Leaders and policy makers in the US, the EU, and elsewhere need to learn that low-IQ immigrants will quickly become a drag on their economies, and provide very few in the way of qualified high tech professionals. Affirmative action can attempt to force these unqualified immigrants into the technical professions, but a lowering of standards will be the result. There lies the Idiocracy and collapse.

It is not for advanced nations to tell third world nations how large their populations can grow. But it is the job of advanced nations to take care of their own societies, and to make sure that they maintain the technological skills and standards which keep their citizens safe, warm, and healthy.

The only shortage humans are facing that is of any significance is the shortage of human ingenuity. If we allow human ingenuity to die out due to postmodern groupthink and political correctness, then certainly everything else that we need will come in short supply. It is up to those who are still awake to make sure that that does not happen.

Must We Kill All Tort Lawyers Before We Can Go Into Space?

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Over at NextBigFuture, Brian Wang looks at the supply and demand economics of space colonisation. Brian points to a more extensive posting by Paul Gilster at Centauri Dreams, "The Economics of Space Infrastructure." Brian and Paul are correctly looking at the economic costs and benefits of space infrastructure and space colonies. But the topic goes far beyond mere economics.

Science Fiction author Charles Stross downplays arguments in favour of space colonies as "quasi-religious." Physicist Stephen Hawking wishes for humans to colonise Mars and Luna, as a way to preserve the human race and Terrestrial life, should Earth be destroyed by comets, asteroids, geologic catatrophe or other forms of massive upheaval. Physicist Freeman Dyson has thought along similar lines since the mid-1960s. The idea of "not having all of one's eggs in a single basket" appeals to the long term thinker who wishes the human enterprise to be ultimately successful.

Humans appear to possess an "exploratory instinct," a natural urge to explore. From the very beginning, humans have been willing to risk what they have, in order to find something more. The urge for outer space is another manifestation of this instinct.

At times it may seem that we have lost this exploratory urge, but always it returns, reshaped by current events. Why is it that we strive to understand our place in the heavens and seek other intelligences out there? _Planetary

Exploration is risky. Explorers often die. In an outward-looking, exploratory society, the acceptance of risk is so commonplace as to become second nature. Such a society will spawn many explorers, and many pioneers who are willing to follow close behind the explorer to create a more settled life in the new, risk-filled territories.

Modern affluent societies become more risk-averse, more fixed on security over time. This security-fixation often approaches pathological levels, depending upon whether it becomes accepted and codified within legal, cultural, educational, and legislative institutions.

In modern western nations -- particularly the US -- risk aversion in the form of tort is often costing societies their birthright and their future.

Economists have long understood that America's tort system acts as a serious drag on our nation's economy. Although many excellent studies have been conducted, no single work has fully captured the true total costs, both static and dynamic, of excessive litigation.

The good news: We now have some reliable figures. The bad news: The costs are far higher than anyone imagined.

Based on our estimates, and applying the best available scholarly research, we believe America's tort system imposes a total cost on the U.S. economy of $865 billion per year. This constitutes an annual "tort tax" of $9,827 on a family of four.

...litigation doesn't just transfer wealth, it also changes behavior, and often in economically unproductive ways. Any true estimate of the costs of America's tort system must also include these dynamic costs of litigation -- the impact on research and development spending, the costs of defensive medicine and the related rise in health-care spending and reduced access to health care, and the loss of output from deaths due to excess liability. _WSJ

Most recent attention to tort reform in the US has focused upon medical tort. But the economic destruction of out-of-control US tort law is felt in every part of society, industry, and the economy. In a society ruled by tyranny of tort, all risk is punished pro-actively. In other words, most great ventures are never even attempted, due to the tight noose of tort -- and other effects of excess government -- around the necks of entire societies. As of 2006, costs of tort in the US had been growing at an average rate of almost 10% annually PDF.

In order to advance, humans must take risks. The elimination of risk from society is also the elimination of growth and advancement. Eliminating risk means inevitable stagnation and decline. It is the great human dieoff by backdoor means, albeit in slow motion form -- at first. Decline has a way of accelerating, however, once it passes a certain point.

Massive -- and still growing -- bureaucracies of government shut in most possibilities of escape from this inbuilt decline. When humans are cut off from expressing their natural instincts, they tend to rebel if they can. Eventually, they grow passive, fatalistic.

It appears as if western educational, news media, and entertainment systems are dedicated to the suppression of the exploratory urge in humans. This society-wide trap appears to be closing more tightly every year, with every pseudo-cause and crusade such as carbon hysteria, or resource scarcity doom.

How can we escape this suffocating atmosphere of security-fixation and excessive risk-aversion? There are few ways to escape other than to emigrate to a less regulated nation, or to build a seastead. Every so often a few people try to start a new country, where they can set their own rules so as to allow greater personal freedoms. Of course, new countries in space -- on the moon, Mars, in the asteroid belt, and beyond -- would represent a big step up from previous efforts.

But people will die in the attempt to establish a permanent human presence and economy in space. That is inevitable. People die in hazardous environments on Earth every day, and outer space is far more hazardous than almost anywhere on Earth. Whenever there is a chance of people dying, lawyers flock like flies on excrement.

We can see in the inability of advanced societies to develop a larger, safer, cleaner nuclear power industry, how tort lawyers combined with government regulators drive up costs to the point of abandonment of multi-billion dollar enterprises and loss of future plans and possibilities.

Established powers aim to remain established powers. That is what the vast inbred and corrupt system of government and law has become in the west. Free humans are hemmed in and restricted. Economies stagnate and the human spirit dies a little with every new encroachment by government and its army of allied extortionists.

People do emigrate to Costa Rica and other small countries where there may be less intrusive regulation and more freedom of activity in many ways. Other people "go Galt" and drop out, go off the grid as it were. Expect to see more of that unless something drastic occurs to reverse the creeping strangulation of the government-legal- quasi organised crime complex.

Can SpaceX and other private space companies provide an escape from the ongoing choking of human freedom in the developed world? Even if improvements in technology allowed the costs of space launch were to come down enough to make travel to the moon economical for middle class incomes, the inbred risk-aversion of modern societies places a limit on how far the movement could progress -- without massive changes in western government and legal systems.

Must we kill all tort lawyers and their fellows in crime, before the human instinct to explore and pioneer can find an outlet in space?

What the Predictions of Greens, Luddites, and Doomers are Worth

CagleCartoon via Historian
The climate of doom generated by greens, Luddites, and doomers of 2010 sounds remarkably similar to the climate of doom generated by the same groups in 1970. Here is some food for thought on the reliability of such predictions:

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” – George Wald, Harvard Biologist

...“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” – Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

...“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….” - Life Magazine, January 1970

“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” – Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

...“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.” – Martin Litton, Sierra Club director

“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’” – Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” – Sen. Gaylord Nelson

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” – Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
... _Historian_Predictions from 1970

More from Paul Ehrlich:

"The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines . . . hundreds of millions of people (including Americans) are going to starve to death." (Population Bomb 1968)
"Smog disasters" in 1973 might kill 200,000 people in New York and Los Angeles. (1969)
"I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." (1969)
"Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion." (1976)
"By 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth's population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people." (1969)
"By 1980 the United States would see its life expectancy drop to 42 because of pesticides, and by 1999 its population would drop to 22.6 million." (1969) _igreens

Even more revealing quotes from our green, dieoff.orgy, and lefty-Luddite friends:

"We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing -- in terms of
economic socialism and environmental policy." Timothy Wirth, former U.S.
Senator (D-Colorado)

...Global Sustainability requires: "the deliberate quest of poverty . . .
reduced resource consumption . . . and set levels of mortality control."
Professor Maurice King

..."Giving society cheap, abundant energy . . . would be the equivalent of
giving an idiot child a machine gun." Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University _Source

Here are more proclamations from your elitist betters:

“We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
- Prof. Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports

“The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing.”
- Christopher Manes, Earth First!

“The extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival for millions, if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on Earth - social and environmental.”
- Ingrid Newkirk, former President of PETA

“I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”
- John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal _Telegraph_quoted in Wiseup

You can find several more equally damning quotes here. Decades after they have been shown to be foolish frauds, these morons still do not know when to shut up (read the comments and weep). And the media does not hesitate to give them a "megaphone of doom" whenever they request one.

Universities, media rooms, and government bureaucracies are full of this type of idiot. If you send your children to university, chances are good that they will be taught crudely updated versions of the same message. The less intelligent of your children will take these ideas to heart, and never give them up. They will be good little lambs to the slaughter.

You, on the other hand, can see the duplicity, the lack of credibility, and have the opportunity to decide for yourself.

Is North America the New Energy Kingdom?

With rising production from shale fields, the U.S. surpassed Russia last year to become the world’s largest supplier of natural gas. Shale now accounts for 10 per cent of the country’s natural gas production – up from 2 per cent in 1990. Chesapeake’s production from its next Texas project, expected by the end of 2012, will by itself supply the energy equivalent of 500,000 barrels of oil a day. _Globe&Mail

We know that Canada is overflowing with hydrocarbons from shale oil to oil sands to coal to natural gas to methane hydrates.... But the US was supposed to be "all tapped out" ever since oil production peaked back around 1970. Is it possible that all of the peak oil and peak energy doomers who foretold the end of US oil & gas may have been a bit premature?

U.S. domestic production for the year will be 140,000 barrels a day higher than last year (which was 410,000 barrels a day higher than 2008). Although the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) says U.S. production will decline next year, who knows?

...As an article last month in The New York Times observed: “Just as it seemed that the world was running on fumes, giant oil fields were discovered off the coasts of Brazil and Africa, and Canadian oil sands projects expanded so fast, they now provide North America with more oil than Saudi Arabia. In addition, the United States has increased domestic oil production for the first time in a generation.” Further still: “Another wave of natural gas drilling has taken off in shale rock fields across the United States, and more shale gas drilling is just beginning in Europe and Asia.”

...For natural gas, the U.S. has the four largest fields in the world: the Haynesville field in Louisiana (with production up by 77 per cent in 2009); the Fayetteville field in Arkansas and the Marcellus field in Pennsylvania (both with production up by 50 per cent); and the Barnett field in Texas and Oklahoma (with production up by double-digit increases). The EIA reports that proven U.S. reserves of natural gas increased last year by 11 per cent to 284 trillion cubic feet – the highest level since 1971.

Beyond shale oil and shale gas, there’s the awesome energy promise of methane hydrates, frozen crystals of water and gas that lie beneath the northern permafrost and beneath oceans floors around the world in quantities that boggle the imagination.

“Assuming 1 per cent recovery,” the U.S. Geological Survey says, “these deposits [in U.S. territory] could meet the natural gas needs of the country (at current rates of consumption) for 100 years.” _Globe&Mail

Gas producers are scurrying to find ways to export gas to cold, hungry customers in Asia and Europe. LNG -- liquified natural gas -- is one approach which is being developed for the export market. GTL -- gas to liquids -- is another approach that is likely to be developed inside the US within the next 10 years. Both approaches will allow for easier entry into the lucrative export markets. The GTL approach will also -- if economical -- allow gas to be converted into liquid fuels at a profit. That should help reduce North American dependency on overseas oil, once developed.

Cross-posted to Al Fin Energy

SpaceX Falcoln 9 Success With Dragon Capsule Orbit & Recovery

Discovery
Elon Musk's SpaceX Falcoln 9 rocket has made its second successful launch to orbit -- but this time it carried the Dragon capsule through two full orbits before a sea landing and recovery. Today's demonstration brings SpaceX that much closer to carrying space cargo to orbit, and eventually carrying astronauts into space.

The mission marked the first time a private company had returned a spacecraft from orbit, a key milestone in the company's quest to shoulder some of the cargo runs to the space station after NASA retires the shuttles next year. SpaceX, which is owned and operated by Elon Musk, is expected to share the work with Orbital Sciences Corp., which plans to test-fly its Taurus 4 rocket and Cygnus capsule next year.

By then, SpaceX may be well on its way to actually docking at the space station. Today's successful mission should help the firm's case to combine the two remaining test flights under its NASA-backed development program and berth a Dragon capsule at the station during its next flight, targeted for Spring or Summer 2011. _Discovery

If we are lucky, SpaceX and other private launch companies will team up with Robert Bigelow's space hotel enterprise and other private space enterprise companies, in a rapid proliferation of profitable space enterprise.

NASA has almost outlived its usefulness to the future of humans in space. Once space commerce becomes a profitable and going concern, we will see how differently things could have gone had the US been governed by more market-oriented leaders throughout the 50's, 60's, and 70's. The entire state-centered mentality that set up shop in the FDR administrations of the 1930s and 1940s doomed the US to a stagnant top-heavy government of lead-bottomed bureaucrats, which has only gotten worse with time.

We will have to see if some of the newer technologies can open up some non-state or minimal-state opportunities for ambitious market-oriented persons of the near future.

Problem Solving with Sudden Creative Insight

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Most of us have solved problems using trial and error, slogging our way through the possibilities until we hit on the right answer. Some of us have solved problems through a sudden flash of insight -- an epiphany or eureka! moment. Of the two methods of problem solving, most of us who have experienced both, would prefer the epiphany. Northwestern University researchers have looked at these two methods of problem solving in an attempt to better understand how to achieve the more preferred sudden insight.

In a just completed study, researchers at Northwestern University found that people were more likely to solve word puzzles with sudden insight when they were amused, having just seen a short comedy routine.

“What we think is happening,” said Mark Beeman, a neuroscientist who conducted the study with Karuna Subramaniam, a graduate student, “is that the humor, this positive mood, is lowering the brain’s threshold for detecting weaker or more remote connections” to solve puzzles.


...For almost a century scientists have used puzzles to study what they call insight thinking, the leaps of understanding that seem to come out of the blue, without the incremental drudgery of analysis.

In one classic experiment, the German psychologist Karl Duncker presented people with a candle, a box of thumbtacks and the assignment of attaching the candle to a wall. About a quarter of the subjects in some studies thought to tack the box to the wall as a support — some immediately, and others after a few failed efforts to tack wax to drywall.

The creative leap may well be informed by subconscious cues. In another well-known experiment, psychologists challenged people to tie together two cords; the cords hung from the ceiling of a large room, too far apart to be grabbed at the same time.

A small percentage of people solved it without any help, by tying something like a pair of pliers to one cord and swinging it like a pendulum so that it could be caught while they held the other cord.

...creative problem-solving usually requires both analysis and sudden out-of-the-box insight.

“You really end up toggling between the two, but I think that they are truly different brain states,” said Adam Anderson, a psychologist at the University of Toronto.

At least, that is what brain-imaging studies are beginning to show. At first, such studies did little more than confirm that the process was happening as expected: brain areas that register reward spiked in activity when people came up with a solution, for instance..

Yet the “Aha!” moment of seeing a solution is only one step along a pathway. In a series of recent studies, Dr. Beeman at Northwestern and John Kounios, a psychologist at Drexel University, have imaged people’s brains as they prepare to tackle a puzzle but before they’ve seen it. Those whose brains show a particular signature of preparatory activity, one that is strongly correlated with positive moods, turn out to be more likely to solve the puzzles with sudden insight than with trial and error (the clues can be solved either way).

...The punch line is that a good joke can move the brain toward just this kind of state. In their humor study, Dr. Beeman and Dr. Subramaniam had college students solve word-association puzzles after watching a short video of a stand-up routine by Robin Williams. The students solved more of the puzzles over all, and significantly more by sudden insight, compared with when they’d seen a scary or boring video beforehand.

This diffuse brain state is not only an intellectual one, open to looser connections between words and concepts. In a study published last year, researchers at the University of Toronto found that the visual areas in people in positive moods picked up more background detail, even when they were instructed to block out distracting information during a computer task.

The findings fit with dozens of experiments linking positive moods to better creative problem-solving. “The implication is that positive mood engages this broad, diffuse attentional state that is both perceptual and visual,” said Dr. Anderson. “You’re not only thinking more broadly, you’re literally seeing more. The two systems are working in parallel.”

The idea that a distracted brain can be a more insightful one is still a work in progress. So, for that matter, is the notion that puzzle-solving helps the brain in any way to navigate the labyrinth of soured relationships, uncertain career options or hard choices that so often define the world outside. _NYT

This line of thought takes me back to the difference between hypnosis and meditation. With hypnosis, the attention is focused so narrowly that the mind becomes progressively unaware of anything except the object of focus. With meditation (mindfulness mediation), the attention becomes softened progressively, so that the mind seems to become aware of everything all at once -- but without anxiety. An ongoing fMRI study comparing hypnosis and mindfulness meditation may help to answer many of the questions which have been asked when comparing the two states of mind.

The Northwestern researchers above discovered that humour tended to soften the attention, and make the mind more prepared to receive a flash of sudden insight for solving a problem. Parallels between humour and meditation have been drawn many times -- specifically by the late philosopher and Zen enthusiast Alan Watts.

Using various metrics including psychological testing and brain imaging, researchers have found that mindfulness meditation tends to lend toward a more youthful and flexible brain -- including the preservation of cortical thickness in older individuals who practise mindfulness, comparable to brain thickness of much younger persons.

Mindfulness should be taught rather early in life, and should become a lifelong practise -- although either is rare, and both together are almost unheard of. Enhanced problem solving and preservation of cortical thickness into old age would both be welcome side benefits to the main effect of an ongoing enhancement of day to day awareness.

More bits and pieces:

The functional M.R.I. images reveal that when people are emotionally distressed — anxious, angry, depressed — the most active sites in the brain are circuitry converging on the amygdala, part of the brain's emotional centers, and the right prefrontal cortex, a brain region important for the hypervigilance typical of people under stress.

By contrast, when people are in positive moods — upbeat, enthusiastic and energized — those sites are quiet, with the heightened activity in the left prefrontal cortex. _Goleman

The difference between concentration/hypnosis and meditation is really more about expansive versus contractive awareness. Many hypnotic induction techniques encourage the subject to shrink their focus down to just one thing such as the hypnotist's voice or watching a small spot on a wall so that all other points of awareness are temporarily pushed out of awareness. In most hypnosis there is initially an increase in Beta brainwaves as the subject engages their thinking mind to start blocking out things. As they physically relax into the experience of concentration the Alpha waves begin to arise.

When you enter into hypnosis much of the racing mind gets pushed out of awareness leaving you with far less mental chatter than usual. Superficially, you might think that sounds just like meditation, and in a way it is, and in another way it isn't. In meditation we transcend racing thoughts whereas in rigid concentration or hypnosis we repress them. The result is less thinking, but the mechanisms work on opposite principles. _ProjectMeditation

Relaxation

When studied in psychology, relaxation refers to a focusing on the mind and a relaxing of the body's muscles. Research has shown that being too tense and/or living with too much stress has a significant negative impact on our lives. It can lead to physical illnesses such as high blood pressure, ulcers, fatigue, and headaches and many psychological issues, including inappropriate or misdirected emotions, confusion, difficulty concentrating, and burn-out. People utilize relaxation, in combination with stress management, to improve their quality of life, reduce the physical components of stress, and improve their psychological functioning.

There are different forms of relaxation, including breathing exercises, deep muscle relaxation, progressive muscle relaxation, imagery, meditation, and yoga. Although each of these has different components, the main goal in each is to relax the body's muscles and focus the mind. Since the body and the mind cannot be separated, most agree that both of these components must be present for any relaxation technique to work.


Hypnosis

Hypnosis is very similar to relaxation in that the same two components of physical and mental must be addressed together. Most professionals agree that hypnosis is a very deep state of relaxation where your mind is more focused and the connection between your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are more clear. _Psych101

This last comparison appears to contradict what I said above about hypnosis and meditation. But remember, there are many forms of meditation. Some of them are virtually indistinguishable from many forms of self-hypnosis.
You could also watch your favourite comic or comedy show, and achieve much of the benefit of meditation. Alternatively, you could just belly laugh. Interestingly, that also works.

Traditional "Passive Learning" Education is Hogwash

SD
Confining children in a classroom with no one but their peers for several hours a day, week after week, year after year, is thought to be the proper way to bestow an education on the child. Somehow, this passive absorption of knowledge from a "learned" teacher is supposed to prepare the child for the time when he will take on the cloak of adulthood and make his own way in the world.

Of course most of us suspect that it is garbage, and that it has always been garbage. But educational research is rather tied up with and obligated to the current system, and has been quite slow to present tangible objections to the way things are. Still, occasionally some light shines through:

New research confirms that having some authority over how one takes in new information significantly enhances one's ability to remember it. The study, in the journal Nature Neuroscience, also offers a first look at the network of brain structures that contribute to this phenomenon.

"Having active control over a learning situation is very powerful and we're beginning to understand why," said University of Illinois psychology and Beckman Institute professor Neal Cohen, who led the study with postdoctoral researcher Joel Voss. "Whole swaths of the brain not only turn on, but also get functionally connected when you're actively exploring the world."

The study focused on activity in several brain regions, including the hippocampus, located in the brain's medial temporal lobes, near the ears. Researchers have known for decades that the hippocampus is vital to memory, in part because those who lose hippocampal function as a result of illness or injury also lose their ability to fully form and retain new memories.

But the hippocampus doesn't act alone. Robust neural connections tie it to other important brain structures, and traffic on these data highways flows in both directions. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, which track blood flow in the brain, show that the hippocampus is functionally connected to several brain networks – distinct regions of the brain that work in tandem to accomplish critical tasks.

To better understand how these brain regions influence active versus passive learning, Voss designed an experiment that required participants to memorize an array of objects and their exact locations in a grid on a computer monitor. A gray screen with a window in it revealed only one object at a time. The "active" study subjects used a computer mouse to guide the window to view the objects.

"They could inspect whatever they wanted, however they wanted, in whatever order for however much time they wanted, and they were just told to memorize everything on the screen," Voss said. The "passive" learners viewed a replay of the window movements recorded in a previous trial by an active subject.

Then participants were asked to select the items they had seen and place them in their correct positions on the screen. After a trial, the active and passive subjects switched roles and repeated the task with a new array of objects.

The study found significant differences in brain activity in the active and passive learners. Those who had active control over the viewing window were significantly better than their peers at identifying the original objects and their locations, the researchers found. Further experiments, in which the passive subjects used a mouse that moved but did not control the viewing window, established that this effect was independent of the act of moving the mouse.

To identify the brain mechanisms that enhanced learning in the active subjects, the researchers repeated the trials, this time testing individuals who had amnesia – a disease characterized by impairment in learning new information – as a result of hippocampal damage. To the surprise of the researchers, these participants failed to benefit from actively controlling the viewing window.

"These data suggest that the hippocampus has a role not just in the formation of new memory but possibly also in the beneficial effects of volitional control on memory," the researchers wrote.

Brain imaging (by means of fMRI) of healthy young subjects engaged in the same active and passive learning tests revealed that hippocampal activity was highest in the active subjects' brains during these tests. Several other brain structures were also more engaged when the subject controlled the viewing window, and activity in these brain regions was more synchronized with that of the hippocampus than in the passive trials.

Activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the cerebellum and the hippocampus (see cartoon) was higher, and more highly coordinated, in participants who did well on spatial recall, the researchers found. Increased activity in the inferior parietal lobe, the parahippocampal cortex and the hippocampus (see cartoon) corresponded to better performance on item recognition.

"Lo and behold," Cohen said, "our friend the hippocampus makes a very conspicuous appearance in active learning."

The new findings challenge previous ideas about the role of the hippocampus in learning, Voss said. It is a surprise, he said, that other brain regions that are known to be involved in planning and strategizing, for instance, "can't do very much unless they can interact with the hippocampus."

Rather than being a passive player in learning, the hippocampus "is more like an integral part of an airplane guidance system," Voss said. "You have all this velocity information, you have a destination target and every millisecond it's taking in information about where you're headed, comparing it to where you need to go, and correcting and updating it." _Eurekalert_via_SD

I quoted more extensively than normal from the news release, in case readers might want as more detail than a snippet. The findings are important, although I fail to understand why the researchers should be surprised about any of these findings.

The key finding in regard to education is that active learners who take an active role in acquiring knowledge, seem to form stronger brain connections and achieve better recall. Sitting in a classroom or lecture hall, listening to a lecture, may be the worst possible form of teaching/learning imaginable.

But will the schools of education -- so deeply in thrall to the powers that be -- begin to rock the boat just a bit, try to change things? Not likely, at least not on a grand scale. The corrupt and failed school system is too attached to the powerful and moneyed interest in the educational - industrial - political complex.

If you haven't read John Taylor Gatto's free online book on American education, or explored the significant number of alternative curricula for homeschools, unschools, and private schools, you owe it to yourself to make up the deficit -- particularly if you have children needing to be educated, or even if you pay taxes to support the current system, or vote on school bonds etc.

The Female Brain's Reaction to Stress

Rutgers
Psychology professor Tracey Shores of Rutgers has discovered some interesting gender differences between the brains of male and female rats in their ability to learn immediately after being stressed.

The research, published Dec. 1 in the Journal of Neuroscience, has implications for the way stress-related disorders are treated in men and women.

Shors and her co-authors, graduate student Lisa Maeng and post-doctoral scholar Jaylyn Waddell, examined two brain regions important in learning and stress, the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. The amygdala, a small almond-shaped structure located deep within the brain, senses stressful situations. The prefrontal cortex, in the front of the brain, is necessary for higher cognitive functions.

“These two structures are intimately connected to one another,” Shors said. “Therefore, we examined whether they communicate with one another to influence learning after stress.”

The researchers exposed male and female rats to stress, and then presented them with an associative learning task. During training, the rats learned to associate one event with another that occurred later in time. They played a tone and later stimulated the rats’ eyelids to elicit a blink. After the stimulus was taken away, most of the male rats responded to the tone by blinking on their own. Most of the females, however, did not blink in response to the tone, indicating that they had failed to learn that association. But the research also contained a neurological surprise for Shors, Maeng and Waddell.

When Shors and her colleagues disrupted the connections between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala in some of the females, those females were able to learn the association.

“This wasn’t true for males," Shors said. "So, males and females are using different brain structures to learn after stress. In other words, females can learn after stress if the prefrontal cortex can’t ‘talk’ to the amygdala. From this, we conclude that males and females can use different brain circuits to learn after stressful life events.” _Rutgers

This study's findings are somewhat consistent with studies in humans from both USC in Los Angeles and researchers in Polish labs. Human males are more likely to analyse the dynamics of a stressful situation with the aim of taking definitive action to resolve the stressful stimulus. This male reaction requires the brain to assess a situation as clearly as possible, which may involve adapting known strategies to the situation or adopting entirely new strategies -- which requires learning.

Human females in the face of stress, tend to look for assistance from sympathetic onlookers, bystanders, or companions. This response requires reading facial expressions of others in the vicinity, as well as their capacity to render assistance. Such abilities are rather instinctive in the female brain, and require minimal learning or creative adaptation.

As to the female rats inability to learn (basic stimulus response conditioning) immediately after stress, the extent of applicability of the finding to human females would require further study. All that can be said with respect to the USC and Polish studies, is that the stereotyped human female response to stress does not typically require new learning, not that she would be unable to learn if necessary (either stimulus-response conditioning or more conventional conscious learning).

No one is proposing cutting frontal cortex pathways in human females for such studies, but brain researchers may soon have tools to allow temporary, selective disruption of targeted pathways. At this time, transcranial magnetic stimulation can disrupt particular cortical areas -- since the cortex is closest to the skull, and easiest to reach with extra-cranial magnetic fields. As scientists find better ways to focus such pulsed fields deeper into the white matter of the brain, more selective targeting should be achievable.

"Scam for the Ages" Makes Madoff Look Like Small Change

WUWT
Is it possible that you are the victim of a massive scam that makes the Bernie Madoff scam -- and all the other famous scams of history -- pale in comparison? It is not only possible -- it is true. In this incomprehensibly vast scam, there are many $billions to be made, and many $trillions to change hands over the next few decades. Clever chaps, these highly placed con-men.

A small number of humans shape and control the information flow that is accessible to most of the human race. Not coincidentally, this small number of persons is also tightly connected to even fewer persons who control most of the world's commercial, industrial, and governmental assets. If you do not take the trouble to step out of the mainstream of information flow, you are not likely to be aware of how your future prospects are being stolen from you without your consent.

Reducing man made carbon dioxide emissions is completely and utterly pointless if your goal is to change the future climate. On the other hand if you’re looking to make money from the trading of carbon allowances (carbon credits) than it makes a great deal of sense. If you’re looking to control the way the modern world makes energy then it makes perfect sense as well. If you’re trying to save the world from capitalists it makes it highly desirable to reduce “dirty” carbon emissions. If your mission is to extract money from developed nations and give it to those countries that have been robbed of their right to burn fossil fuels to grow their economies then it [may appear to be] the moral thing to do. If you are in the renewable energy business it makes perfect sense to support the reduction of carbon dioxide “pollution”. If you’re one of hundreds of environmental corporations whos mission is to save the planet at any cost, [and reduce the human population of Earth by at least 90%] then shutting down all sources of man made carbon dioxide is a war you must win. What cause could be nobler than to save the planet? _EnergyTribune

Bracketed comments in the quote above are editorial insertions by Al Fin

The frantic global rush to control human energy production -- and thus all human industry and commerce -- is based upon catastrophic climate models which project a "runaway greenhouse effect" from human CO2 emissions. But are the models believable? Are these pliable constructs of an infant science -- climatology -- trustworthy enough to base the entire human future upon their computations? There are reasons to strongly doubt the reliability of the models. From the paper: Anagnostopoulos, G. G., Koutsoyiannis, D., Christofides, A., Efstratiadis, A. & Mamassis, N. (2010) A comparison of local and aggregated climate model outputs with observed data. Hydrol. Sci. J. 55(7), 1094-1110 (via WUWT) we can see a few detailed comparisons between climate model outputs and actual observations.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global circulation models (GCM) are able to “reproduce features of the past climates and climate changes” (Randall et al., 2007, p. 601). Here we test whether this is indeed the case. We examine how well several model outputs fit measured temperature and rainfall in many stations around the globe. We also integrate measurements and model outputs over a large part of a continent, the contiguous USA (the USA excluding islands and Alaska), and examine the extent to which models can reproduce the past climate there. We will be referring to this as “comparison at a large scale”. _WUWT

When predicting the future it is best if your predictions range far beyond the lifetimes of anyone currently alive. That way, when you are proven wrong, no one then alive will particularly care one way or another -- certainly not you or your primary antagonists, who are long since dead. Climate modelers would like to have such luxury, but if they are to be taken at all seriously -- even by their fellows who are accepting generous and targeted research grants like themselves -- they must leave a way for the models to be tested, some tenuous connection between the models and real world observations. So far, the models appear to be highly biased and unreliable.

Is it possible that the models' outputs -- and the sensationalist headlines about climate change that face us on every front on every day of the year -- may be just a bit exaggerated?

The primary greenhouse gases listed in order of their contribution to the effect are: Water vapor, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane. There are others but their concentrations in the atmosphere are so small they don’t contribute much effect. Water vapor and clouds are about 93% of the greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide about 5%, nitrous oxide about 0.95% and methane contributes about 0.36%. It’s the combined greenhouse warming from these gases that gives the earth its current average temperature.

Studies by Raval & Ramanathan (1989) estimated that the greenhouse effect of a cloudless atmosphere is 146 W/m2 (watts per square meter) for the average earth. They further pointed out that water vapor is accounting for most of this greenhouse effect, leaving about 8 W/m2 for the total amount of atmospheric CO2, i.e. some 5%. In addition the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate changes (IPCC) 4th assessment showed that 3% of the atmospheric CO2 comes from man made sources. Global gross primary production and respiration, land use changes plus CO2 from the oceans totals 213 gigatons of carbon exchanged each year between the earth/oceans and the atmosphere. The IPCC figure also shows man made carbon emissions to be about 7 gigatons bringing the total to 220 gigatons per year. So from this we can see that making energy from fossil fuels is adding about 3% of the carbon dioxide added to the air each year. From that the total human component of the greenhouse effect is therefore about 3% of the total carbon dioxide component of the greenhouse effect which is 5%. That gives us a value of 0.1% from man made carbon dioxide. If you think that’s a small number you’re right. _EnergyTribune

In reality, humans could reduce their CO2 contribution to virtually nothing, and the climate would not change its trajectory. But the human population would rapidly die off to a relatively low level -- which is precisely what legions of faux environmentalists would like to see occur. And a few well-placed individuals would reap many $billions (or more) of diverted resources, which would place them in a most elevated position with respect to the mere hundreds of millions of subsistence-level humans who might survive the energy starvation and dieoff.orgy.

US President Obama's staff is well-stocked with such faux environmentalist dieoff.orgiasts, and his presidential campaign was well-financed by individuals, corporations, and investment banks who are likely to do very well from carbon markets, trades, and regulations.

If you still believe in climate catastrophe from anthropogenic greenhouse gases, then you are not likely to change your point of view by looking at observations, data, or evidence which contradicts your point of view. You are one of the happy pawns to be sacrificed at will. But for the rest -- those who seek out information for yourselves, and do your own weighing of the evidence -- for you there is just a bit of fore-knowledge.

You can get involved in politics to attempt to slow the energy starvation reich's agenda a bit, or you can make personal preparations for what is coming, or both. Alternatively, you can try to get in on the big scam. Your move.

Extra Bonus: 120 Years of Media Coverage of Climate Catastrophe -- Hot and Cold. Climate is cyclic -- first hot, then cold, then hot again. Whichever direction the cycle is heading, it is always a catastrophe to the media and to credulous consumers of media crap.

The current Religious Orthodoxy of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming -- CAGW -- is easily converted to an orthodoxy of CAGC, if conditions warrent. The direction of climate temperature is irrelevant. It is the doom that counts.

Mysterious Shape Shifting Creature Appears Almost Human!

This amazing creature can appear to be either male or female, and can adopt several different ethnicities. The order of the images is deceptively placed -- making it appear as if a young human child is growing older. But in reality, the youngest-looking images are the most recent!

The shifter sometimes appears as a grown woman with full breasts, or as a hairy chested man with male genitals. The montage below illustrates the same shifter as a young woman, but it was actually created years before the "baby pictures" which are displayed above.

Finally, here again is the creature demonstrating a remarkable 10 year transformation in a mere one minute and 25 seconds. As before, the transformation has been reversed on the video, as a joke -- since in reality the creature changed from a ten year old to a mere newborn in only 1' 25". Inserting itself into a hospital nursery bassinet is but one of the many ways it has to get others to take care of it, while it does its mischief.

There is really no way to anticipate the next form that the shifter will adopt. It may be near you now, closer than you might imagine. Beware the shifter, lest it leave you cold, penniless, and alone, in the coming ice age of global cooling.

Neither Washington nor Wall Street Understand Economies

Freedom and Prosperity

If the US cannot wake itself from its anti-market delusions quite soon, that nation and the rest of the world is bound to suffer far beyond current expectations.

Stock prices and commodities have risen, but these signs of life are not supported by the real, underlying US economy. And it is the reviving of the US economy which most of the world is waiting for -- despite widespread claims to the contrary. From Berlin to Beijing to Brasilia to Tokyo and far beyond, the long interactive network of international markets are waiting for the sleeping giant to awaken. But as long as the US is led by an anti-market executive and Senate, the reality behind the news will not be good.

Morgan Stanley and Iran are saying that $120 oil is coming, and everyone will be fine, but the truth is, everyone will not be fine with $120 oil.

The underlying numbers do not support a sustained recovery in employment or significant private, non-governmental sectors of the economy, despite the wishful thinking of the clueless.

Debt and demographics are combining to doom large parts of Europe to violence and economic stagnation. The same destructive combination is coming to US states which have overspent their futures on the salaries, benefits, and pensions of current government employees. Not to mention the federal government's entitlement avalanche which is inexorably heading toward the $100 trillion (with a "T") mark.

The US is clearly in no position to bail out the EU or anyone else. If ordinary Americans cannot wean their government and sticky-fingered big investors from the public teat and cookie jar, and convince them that it is time to bring the age of Keynes to a close and enter a new age of fiscal reality, the future pain to be faced by those who survive will be far greater than the necessary pain of facing our accumulated problems today.

Why Do Greens Hate and Fear Clean, Abundant Energy?

New Republic recently admitted that, "Utopian environmentalism...is a form of escapism and disengagement from reality." The extremists scoff at science and would apparently prefer scarcity so that bureaucratic rationing will enforce a change in American lifestyles.

Instead of producing more of the cheap, abundant energy that fueled America's dynamic growth, the extremists who support and surround Obama dream of drastically cutting American consumption. _ReasonMag

Powerful green (and Luddite) lobbies believe that a source of clean and abundant energy would be an unmitigated disaster to their cause (and their livelihood). That is one reason that the Obama administration is trying so hard to bankrupt coal before clean technologies can gain a foodhold, and to prohibit shale gas and oil sands through backdoor faux environmental regulations. Abundant, clean energy would be a boon to the private sector of the economy and to economic growth. Greens and Luddites hate nothing more than a prosperous, growing private sector.

Geoffrey Styles confronted the energy starvationists on a recent webinar, where the fanatical zeal of energy starvationists and dieoff.orgiasts was on full display.

Yesterday I participated in a webinar on The Energy Collective examining the sustainability aspects of the shale gas revolution. The online audience asked good, probing questions, and if there was a theme to them, it seemed to be that somehow the sudden abundance of natural gas resulting from a novel combination of shale-exploitation technologies--as well as the technologies themselves--must at a minimum be considered a mixed blessing, if not actually too bitter a pill to swallow, because of its perceived shortcomings and the potential threat it poses to other, favored energy technologies.

The biggest uncertainties associated with shale gas don't concern the size of the resource or our ability to extract it safely, but whether we will decide to allow this to be done on a scale that would make a meaningful difference in our energy and emissions balances, or under such tight restrictions that we will forgo its game-changing potential. Like anything, shale gas drilling and fracking must be done responsibly, in accordance with state and local regulations and to industry standards that are constantly improving. Post-Deepwater Horizon, that's a much tougher sell, but it doesn't make it any less important. Shale gas isn't perfect energy, not because of any unique imperfections, but because there is no perfect energy source. It requires mature, reasonable assessments of its risks that don't assume that there is. _GeoffreyStyles

Greens and Luddites want nothing more than to starve the developed nations down to a much smaller size. Their motives are mixed, being based on both political biases and faux environmental premises. The end result -- if Salazar, Holdren, Obama, Boxer, etc. are allowed to succeed -- is an industrial collapse in the west due to "voluntary" energy starvation.

The rest of the world will survive in better condition, because China, Russia, India, Brazil, and other nations are not so foolish as to destroy their own nations' industrial and commercial capacity via energy starvation. Unfortunately, the EU and the Anglosphere may be too invested in carbon hysteria and faux environmentalism to reverse course before running aground on its own idiocy.

Previously published at Al Fin Energy

Champions of the faux environmental religions have gone on record declaring that the invention of an abundant new energy source would be an unmitigated disaster to their cause -- even if the new energy were neither polluting nor destructive to the environment or wildlife habitat. Clean, abundant energy would stimulate another round of prosperity and growth for the global economy, and that is something the faux environmentalists have worked against too hard and too long to allow to happen -- if they can help it.

More 9Dec2010: Amory Lovins:"If you ask me, it’d be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. " From Mother Earth News interview. H/T Pushback and Truth about Energy.

Flooding the Back Streets of Europe

BackStreetsNearly one million illegal immigrants flood into Europe from the third world every year. Europe can expect a grand future of poverty, crime, and inbred decline, as it continues to fill with third world immigrants -- both legal and illegal -- and the rapidly expanding number of progeny from legitimate and illegitimate immigrants. Here is another look at Thilo Sarrazin's book, Germany Abolishes Itself:

Third World immigrants are attracted to Germany not by abstract concepts of free speech, the rule of law, liberal democracy and personal freedom but by the higher standard of living they can enjoy at the expense of the German taxpayer. In part because of the Nazi period, the pressure on Germans to conform to the United Nations-sponsored ideology of multiculturalism has been immense, much worse than anything we have experienced in the United Kingdom. History matters: the Nazi past will remain an integral part of Germany’s history but no other nation has submitted itself to such soul-searching and public flagellation in order to face up to its past and to make amends. However, one of the downsides has been to treat any assertion of national German pride as a manifestation of Neo-Nazi tendencies, as something hideously offensive and shameful when it is, in fact, the normal, emotional and rational pride in, and commitment to, one’s country of origin, to one’s Vaterland, to use that beautifully evocative German word.

It is this specifically German historical, social and political background that makes the publication of Thilo Sarrazin’s book in Germany so remarkable, and all the more remarkable for its having been written by one of Germany’s top technocrats, a person at the very heart of the German administrative establishment, a person, who whatever his misgivings about the state of Germany, I, for one, would have expected to remain silent. Clearly, Herr Sarrazin has had enough. He instinctively grasps the truth of Solzhenitysn’s eleventh commandment: thou shall not live by the Lie. There is something about Sarrazin that bears the stamp of Martin Luther, Pastor Martin Niemöller and the White Rose students who defied the Nazis in Munich. Moral courage is always inspirational and life-enhancing. Indeed, the fact that Sarrazin’s book has become a best seller in Germany and attracted enormous support for its author may well have prompted Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, publicly to admit (October 2010) that multiculturalism had utterly failed in Germany. Indeed, it has: and not just in Germany. _SMOA

Here is a 15 minute politically correct video look at Sarrazin's themes:

It is important to see beyond the self-blindered political correctness, and understand how Europe will decline as a result of its negligent attitudes toward immigration -- particularly immigration from the Muslim third world. One of the many problems that an Islamic explosion brings to the western world is a general decline in average human capital and a lowered capacity to meet difficult challenges. The average IQ of populations in most Islamic countries, for example, is 90 or lower.

A rough estimate shows that close to half of all Muslims in the world are inbred: In Pakistan, 70 percent of all marriages are between first cousins (so-called "consanguinity") and in Turkey the amount is between 25-30 percent (Jyllands-Posten, 27/2 2009 More stillbirths among immigrants"

Statistical research on Arabic countries shows that up to 34 percent of all marriages in Algiers are consanguine (blood related), 46 percent in Bahrain, 33 percent in Egypt, 80 percent in Nubia (southern area in Egypt), 60 percent in Iraq, 64 percent in Jordan, 64 percent in Kuwait, 42 percent in Lebanon, 48 percent in Libya, 47 percent in Mauritania, 54 percent in Qatar, 67 percent in Saudi Arabia, 63 percent in Sudan, 40 percent in Syria, 39 percent in Tunisia, 54 percent in the United Arabic Emirates and 45 percent in Yemen (Reproductive Health Journal, 2009 Consanguinity and reproductive health among Arabs.).

A large part of inbred Muslims are born from parents who are themselves inbred - which increase the risks of negative mental and physical consequenses greatly.

The amount of blood related marriages is lower among Muslim immigrants living in the West. Among Pakistanis living in Denmark the amount is down to 40 percent and 15 percent among Turkish immigrants (Jyllands-Posten, 27/2 2009 More stillbirths among immigrants".).


More than half of Pakistani immigrants living in Britain are intermarried:

The research, conducted by the BBC and broadcast to a shocked nation on Tuesday, found that at least 55% of the community was married to a first cousin. This is thought to be linked to the probability that a British Pakistani family is at least 13 times more likely than the general population to have children with recessive genetic disorders.” (Times of India, 17/11 2005 Ban UK Pakistanis from marrying cousins).

The lower percentages might be because it is difficult to get the chosen family member to the country, or because health education is better in the West.


Low intelligence

Several studies show that children of consanguineous marriages have lower intelligence than children of non-related parents. Research shows that the IQ is 10-16 points lower in children born from related parents and that abilities related to social behavior develops slower in inbred babies:

"Effects of parental consanguinity on the cognitive and social behavior of children have been studied among the Ansari Muslims of Bhalgapur, Bihar.

IQ in inbred children (8-12 years old) is found to be lower (69 in rural and 79 in suburban populations) than that of the outbred ones (79 and 95 respectively). The onset of various social profiles like visual fixation, social smile, sound seizures, oral expression and hand-grasping are significantly delayed among the new-born inbred babies." (Indian National Science Academy, 1983 Consanguinity Effects on Intelligence Quotient and Neonatal Behaviours of nsari Muslim Children").

The article "Effects of inbreeding on Raven Matrices" concludes that "Indian Muslim school boys, ages 13 to 15 years, whose parents are first cousins, were compared with classmates whose parents are genetically unrelated on the Raven Standard Progressive Matrices, a nonverbal test of intelligence. The inbred group scored significantly lower and had significantly greater variance than the non-inbred group, both on raw scores and on scores statistically adjusted to control for age and socioeconomic status." (Behaviour Genetics, 1984). _EuropeNews_via_IslamMonitor

Europe's indigenous women are not having children, so that the population of Europeans in several European nations is dropping rapidly. "Muhammed", or a variant, is swiftly becoming the most popular name in newborn wards of European hospitals. European schools, prisons, and poverty rolls are filling up with legal and illegal third world immigrants and their offspring.

The cities of Europe have already begun to change in most unpleasant ways -- in terms of rape, robbery, assaults etc. It is in the cities of Europe where the effects of this massive demographic handover are most prominent. Once a crime-prone sub-population grows above 10% in a city, quality of life begins to drop -- even outside the immigrant ghettos. As city populations with lower IQ and high criminal tendencies grows to 20%, 30%, and higher, all hope for a decent life in the city must be abandoned. If that city is a nation's capital or industrial center, the loss of quality of life within the city is felt well out into the country-side -- even if the percentage of the crime-bringing sub-population is very low outside of the city.

What Is Metabolic Engineering and Why Should We Care?

LBLNewsMetabolic Engineering is one of those bastard terms which is often spawned by science-savvy folks in academia who are functionally illiterate. For example, MIT has a lab department of Bioinformatics and Metabolic Engineering. Rice has studies in Biological Chemistry and Metabolic Engineering. Harvard teaches Systems Metabolic Engineering. Cornell has a lab for Biomolecular and Metabolic Engineering. At Berkeley, the subject falls under the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering... and so on. When will we be given entire departments of Respiratory Engineering, Mitochondrial Engineering, Liposome Engineering, or Cholesterol Membrane Engineering? There truly is no end to the number of departmental classifications that could be spawned by the postmodern twits of academia who have acquired a little bit of specialised scientific training.

Forgive me, I got a bit sidetracked. Chemical engineer Jay Keasling has published an article in Science discussing the "Future of Metabolic Engineering," in which he looks at the possibilities of creating designer molecules, cells, and micro-organisms.

In a paper published in the journal Science titled “Manufacturing molecules through metabolic engineering,” Keasling discusses the potential of metabolic engineering – one of the principal techniques of modern biotechnology – for the microbial production of many of the chemicals that are currently derived from non-renewable resources or limited natural resources. Examples include, among a great many other possibilities, the replacement of gasoline and other transportation fuels with clean, green and renewable biofuels.

“Continued development of the tools of metabolic engineering will be necessary to expand the range of products that can be produced using biological systems, Keasling says. “However, when more of these tools are available, metabolic engineering should be just as powerful as synthetic organic chemistry, and together the two disciplines can greatly expand the number of chemical products available from renewable resources.”

...Metabolic engineering is the practice of altering genes and metabolic pathways within a cell or microorganism to increase its production of a specific substance. Keasling led one of the most successful efforts to date in the application of metabolic engineering, when he combined it with synthetic organic chemistry techniques to develop a microbial-based means of producing artemisinin, the most potent of all anti-malaria drugs. He and his research group at JBEI are now applying that same combination to the synthesis of liquid transportation fuels from lignocellulosic biomass. In all cases, the goal is to engineer microbes to perform as much of the chemistry required to produce a desired final product as possible.

“To date, microbial production of natural chemical products has been achieved by transferring product-specific enzymes or entire metabolic pathways from rare or genetically intractable organisms to those that can be readily engineered,” Keasling says. “Production of non-natural specialty chemicals, bulk chemicals, and fuels has been enabled by combining enzymes or pathways from different hosts into a single microorganism, and by engineering enzymes to have new function.”

These efforts have utilized well-known, industrial microorganisms, but future efforts, he says, may include designer molecules and cells that are tailor-made for the desired chemical and production process. _LBLNews_via_BrianWang

Sound familiar, this metabolic engineering? Like a contrived illegitimate offspring of genetic engineering, synthetic biology, and metabolomics? It's bad enough to have a proliferation of -omics, such as genomics, proteinomics, metabolomics, glycomics, lipomics . . . It is almost enough to turn a person homicidalomic.

Psychiatry with its DSM is almost as insane. But these irrational and cumbersome systems of classification tend to evolve by the method of poorly punctuated disequilibrium, leaving those downstream to deal with the offalness of it all.

Does Keasling simply want to excel in a field that another researcher -- Craig Venter -- has already staked out -- synthetic biology? Venter has long since founded a company called Synthetic Genomics. Is it possible that Keasling is unwilling to share the same field with a person such as Venter, who is already hot on the trail of the very things that Keasling claims to be pursuing in the name of Metabolic Engineering? Fine. Do the same thing, but call it something different. No one will ever know.

A Dynamic Collection of Integrated Neural Processes, Centered on the Representation of the Living Body, That Finds Expression in a Dynamic Collection of Integrated Mental Processes

B&NReview
Cognitive scientist Antonio Damasio has authored some of the most successful, influential, and widely read popular science books on the mind. His latest book, "Self Comes to Mind," is an attempt at "starting over." Damasio wants to re-draw his vision of consciousness and the mind, on a larger canvas, and with the advantage of recent research findings and more comprehensive thinking on his own part.

But can a middle-aged man truly start over? Will society allow it? The publication of Damasio's new book has spawned a large number of published responses, from the respectful Jonah Lehrer interview, to the somewhat bemused Barnes & Noble review by philosopher A C Grayling, to the quasi-temper tantrum thrown by psychologist Alison Gopnik, in Slate.

When a person accumulates a body of work and thought, it is difficult to start over. And despite his claim, Damasio is not actually beginning again at the beginning -- that would be impossible. He is taking much of the respect and credibility that he has earned from past research and writings, and risking it all in an attempt to create something quite magnificent -- the beginnings of a seminal vision of how human minds work.

Damasio makes a case for the necessity of a "self", or subjective element, in the mind. And he locates the self precisely within the body -- or at least the parts of the brain that sense and map the body. Despite Damasio's claims of "starting over," feelings and emotions play central roles in this embodied self, this anchor of higher consciousness. In fact, threads of his previous thoughts pervade his newest work.

The author builds his argument chapter by chapter, bringing the reader up to date on known brain functions, theories of mind, and new research findings which utilise the latest tools. So far, so good. But then, in connecting the threads of self, the body, feelings, consciousness, perception, movement, attention, and some types of memory, Damasio climbs far out onto the brain stem. By doing so, he may be providing jealous rivals -- some of them possessing psychological chain saws -- an opportunity to cut him off at the stump. Damasio does not care. To Damasio, the vision is the important thing, not necessarily what others might construe of it. If the vision is true, eventually it will come through.

Damasio looks at the mind from the level of brain centers and pathways, and from the higher level of mental processes up to the self. Some readers will be satisfied with his weaving of the two levels together, and others will not. It is worth the time and the struggle, in my opinion, as an introduction to cognition.

The truly hard work has yet to be done. And since an ultimate understanding of the human mind -- as far as modern humans are capable -- will require a monumental acquisition of concepts as well as a monumental erasing of mis-concepts, it is unlikely that many of the current crop of cognitive scientists will ever live to see the promised land. Starting over is much harder than one might think.

Update 27Dec2010: Philosopher Ned Block takes a shot at Damasio's book in the pages of the New York Times. I admit to being a bit puzzled by Block's obvious and repeated mischaracterisations of some of the basic ideas in Damasio's book, until I reached the final paragraph in Block's critique. It seems that Block is disturbed that some of Damasio's ideas may be used to justify suffering by cows and chickens in the livestock and food production business. Apparently, Block did not read the book at all, but rather seized upon a few sections which raised red flags in the minefield of Block's politically correct consciousness.

You would be amazed how common it is that busy book reviewers fail to read the books they are reviewing. I suppose when one is politically correct enough, one hardly has to read or think deeply about an idea in order to recognise it as heresy. Understanding such emotional and reflexive "thinking" is part of the reason why thinking people should read books such as Damasio's "Self Comes to Mind."

Brain as Co-Processor: Grobyc Super-Computers?

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Computers lack a certain je ne sais quoi, which has prevented them from achieving the next level of quasi-intelligence. Humans, on the other hand, possess that ineffable quality in abundance, and some may be willing to share with computers -- to lift them up, closer to our level. Columbia University researchers are looking into the techniques of mind-sharing, with some interesting findings:

Most brain-computer interfaces are designed to help disabled people communicate or move around. A new project is using this type of interface to help computers perform tasks they can't manage on their own...[The] device, called C3Vision (cortically coupled computer vision), uses an electroencephalogram (EEG) cap to monitor brain activity as the person wearing it is shown about 10 images per second. Machine-learning algorithms trained to detect the neurological signals that signify interest in an image are used to analyze this brain activity. By monitoring these signals, the system rapidly ranks the images in terms of how interesting they appear to the viewer.

...At the speed at which it works, the conscious brain is unable to register a "hit." But the neurological visual pathways work much faster, says Sajda. The brain produces distinct electrical signals that can be detected and decoded by the 64 EEG electrodes within the cap. "It's on the edge of the subconscious," he says. _TechnologyReview

That is the key point, of course. By using the brain below the level of consciousness, the brain-computer hybrid -- or grobyc -- is able to function more quickly than the conscious mind, and on a higher level than a mere computer.

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Researchers have worked with grobycs using insect brains as controllers for several years. But it is only recently that the "mind-reading" technology has become available which allows the human subconscious -- much faster than the conscious -- to function as a computer controller.

This is the key difference between a human cyborg and a human grobyc. In the human cyborg, the human uses machine augmentation to perform tasks it could not otherwise perform. In the human grobyc, the machine uses the human brain as an adjunct to machine operation. The person's conscious mind (if any) need not be aware of the low level activity at all.

Doug Hofstadter has been writing about this slippery component of the human mind for over 30 years. It is central to the human mind's ability to think generatively and autonomously -- although outside input is crucial. It is the phenomenon of metaphorical stacking down to the embodied, non-verbal levels. It one of many critical features of mammalian general intelligence that AI researchers have ignored for over 60 years to their detriment.

Because the field of AI has neglected something so central to intelligence for so long, scientists are forced to use human brains as co-processors, and reduce human minds to grobyc status. Imagine: "My life as grobyc."

It certainly opens up entire new avenues for commerce and enterprise, to those forward thinkers looking to seize an under valued and under utilised resource to turn a profit. In the future, humans may sell the use of their subconscious minds to Google while they are sleeping, providing the mega-corporation with computational powers of search and subtle "slippery discrimination" its competition could only dream of.

More ominously, governments may use the subconscious minds of the masses to find better ways to control them en masse. This is an application to which an Idiocracy is ideally suited, unfortunately. Think of it as "following the ratings" or "following the polls", but on rocket fuel, and taken to the lowest common denominator.

Bonus: NYT article profiling "Portraits of the Mind", beautiful images of the brain
In the game of intelligence, the score is: Natural Evolution 1 AI Design 0